self-professed incessant apologetic..

I often think that it is a troubling indication for any friendships when you start apologizing needlessly to your friends; when your conversations are littered with the excessive use of the phrase "I'm sorry" or "I wanted to apologize for..." or something to that effect.

I admit that I am inclined to do that sometimes but I feel that I have managed to keep that tendency in check lately; lacing my apologies with humor often do the trick.

Therefore, when Song - with a slightly exasperated tone - told me that I'm being too apologetic, I knew that I am in danger of reverting back to my old apologetic self.

The conventional reason people often give for exhibiting such behavior is the fear of losing your close friends in case you accidentally upsets or hurts them. But I feel that that is only part of the real reason.

Apologetic people are what they are because they want to be in complete control of the perceptions and views others might have towards them. They want other people to regard them exactly the way they wish themselves to be regarded by other people.

When they have this goal in mind, they will try their best to act in such a way that other people will view them favorably. However, being human themselves, apologetic people will at times act foolishly or upset others; they will do things which are totally contradictory to the favourable image which they are desperately trying to cultivate. It is exactly when such things happens that they begin to apologize profusely to their friends hoping that such shameful acts will not affect their friend's perception towards them, hoping that their friends will dismiss such acts as a quirk and not indicative of their true personality.

I believe that there are several possible reasons which forces them to go through all this trouble: apologetic people may be overly conscious about their image perceived by others; apologetic people may harbor some insecurities of their own which forces them to seek acknowledgement and recognition from others; apologetic people may treasure a person's company so much that they are afraid of effectively losing it if they were to mistreat him.

Ultimately, I think it is question of trust - or rather, the lack of it; there is a fine line between minding your words and actions so that you won't upset your friends and being too protective and too careful until you are cowed into repeatedly punctuating your sentences with apologies or worse still, not risking to say anything at all to your friends.

Hurting and upsetting your friends is an inescapable fact one must be comfortable with if one wish to have a friend or be in a relationship. It is something one can't avoid from doing forever; is it not a question of if, but a question of when and how.

With that in mind, one doesn't need to be ready to apologize all the time if one feels that he/she have overstepped some boundaries; one just have to trust and believe that your friend will understand the circumstances which leads to your 'bad' actions and eventually bring themselves to forgive you.

After all, isn't being forgiven by others more preferable than having to forgive yourself each time something goes wrong between you and your friends? The former is a far better test of a friendship rather than the latter.

Besides, those who are afraid of making mistakes and taking risks have no idea what they are missing...